Random Acts of Poetry Day–October 2017
On October 4, we celebrate Random Acts of Poetry Day.
Poets everywhere will write poems on sidewalks, blackboards, and whiteboards. They will pin poems on bulletin boards wherever they are found; and perhaps will distribute copies of poems in parks and on streets, buses, trains, and subways; and in restaurants, libraries, airports, shops, hotel lobbies, or any place encouraging public advertisements.
I offer four poems to random electronic readers to celebrate the day. Only one of the four I’ve selected is mine. The others are favorites, some of which I’ve mentioned in this blog earlier.
- Simple Simon by Eve Merriam a
Simple Simon
Met a high man
In the government.
Said Simple Simon
To the high man,
“How are the taxes spent?”
“Billions,” said the high man
“For an antimissile system
That’s bound
To be obsolete
Before it ever
Gets off the ground.”
“But that’s ridiculous!”
Said Simple Simon
“If people knew
They’d make a fuss.”
“True,” said the high man.
“And when you take into account
That for just about half that amount
Everybody could have a decent job
And a house in a decent neighborhood.”
“Fantastic,” said Simple Simon.
“I don’t believe it.”
Said the high man,
“Good.”
a) from The Inner City Mother Goose. 3rd Edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, p. 15.
- My Brother’s Shirt, by Rebecca Kai Dotlich.b
It is mine now,
one stiff Army shirt,
THOMPSON printed
on the pocket.
United States Army
sends something home;
gives part of you back.
The part that cannot
breathe, or speak
or tease me
anymore.
b) From America at War. Edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Children’s Books, 2008, p.67.
- “Racer” by Allan Roy Andrews c
Slender, thinner than one ought,
Her thighs taut, her back sloped
To drive body-force into revolutions,
She conquers nature, a captain
At the helm, married to the wind
And snarling at her upstream cruise.
A jogger on jagged steel;
A devotee to the derailleur; a lover
Lashed to drooping handlebars,
She gloats in unstopped speed,
And the sprocketed ticking
Of her spoked feet rises and fades,
A hissing siren kissing asphalt,
Luring my legs to her ways.
c) Originally published in Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature Vol. X, No. 2, Spring, 1993, page 60. Accessed at poetrybyara.wordpress.com
- i thank You God for most this amazing by e. e. cummings d
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened.)
d) From 100 Selected Poems by e. e. cummings. New York: Grove Press First Evergreen Edition, 1959, Poem 95, page 114.
